A reminder: My books

    

      

      

      

Every now and then, readers ask how many books I’ve written, and what the titles are. Here’s the list as of February 2019. Into the Black Nowhere is the most recent. Click on each cover to learn more about each title.

And if you want to know the order in which they’ve been published, here you go. From first to fourteenth:

Evan Delaney novels:
China Lake
Mission Canyon
Jericho Point
Crosscut
Kill Chain

Jo Beckett novels:
The Dirty Secrets Club
The Memory Collector
The Liar’s Lullaby
The Nightmare Thief

Stand alone novels:
Ransom River
The Shadow Tracer
Phantom Instinct

UNSUB novels:
UNSUB
Into the Black Nowhere

Happy reading, y’all.

Get signed, personalized books for the 2017 holidays

      
      
      

The holidays are coming up, and of course you’re contemplating giving books as gifts to everyone you know and love. Right?

If you’d like to get copies of my novels, you can now arrange for me to scribble in them, no matter how far away you live or whether you catch me in person when I have a pen in my hand. Thanks to my fantastic local bookstore, Book People in Austin, you can order signed, personalized copies of my novels. The store ships across the USA and internationally.

Book People doesn’t have a hard deadline for holiday shipping, but the sooner you order, the better.

UPDATE! Book People says:

To ensure orders make it somewhere in time for Christmas, we ask that they be placed before (not on) December 19th at the absolute latest. Making an order that late would require UPS shipping, our more expensive option, so customers looking to ship through USPS should place orders before the 12th to be sure they make it on time. UPS shipping typically takes 3 to 5 business days and USPS typically takes 5 to 10 business days.

If you’d like to order copies of my books and have me sign them, call (512) 472-5050 or CLICK HERE.

And once you order my books, you can keep on going and order books by other authors as well. Book People has a whole store full of them. What are you waiting for?

Dødens Melodi: Liar’s Lullaby Norwegian edition

I do love getting foreign editions of my books in the mail. Oh, lookie! The cover even has my name in shiny letters.

California Dreamin’ — Songs my characters love

All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray… okay, all the leaves are scarlet and it’s a vivid autumn day. The point is, songs. And not just songs I love, like “California Dreamin’,” but songs my characters love. I want to reassure everybody that my characters do have loves and hatreds. Because in a recent post — What do writers owe readers? — some commenters expressed surprise that the characters in my books are fictional. Please don’t panic. They’re as real to me as they are to you, and to prove it, here are their favorite, and least favorite, songs.

Loves:

Evan Delaney — Patsy Cline, “Crazy.” Mary Chapin Carpenter, “Jubilee.”

Jesse Blackburn — Jimi Hendrix, “All Along the Watchtower.” Foo Fighters, “Times Like These.”

Jax Rivera — Ray Charles, “Georgia on My Mind.”

Jo Beckett — Elvis Costello, “Complicated Shadows.”

Gabe Quintana — Stephen Sondheim, “Johanna.” No, only kidding. Los Lobos, “Will the Wolf Survive?”

Lt. Amy Tang — Beyoncé/Jay-Z, “Crazy in Love.”

Rory Mackenzie — Radical Face, “Welcome Home.”

Riss Mackenzie — Amy Winehouse, “Some Unholy War.”

Hates:

Jesse — “Memory,” played on a Hammond organ at the Holiday Inn in Goleta, California.

Evan — Donny and Marie.

Rory — anything that Riss has played within her hearing.

The Liar’s Lullaby: U.S. paperback edition published today

The Liar’s Lullaby is now available in paperback in the USA. Yes, that’s the cover, shiny and smooth and bursting with enticing color. And the book is full of thrillery excitement.

Look what you get, in such a tidy package. Jo Beckett. A dead rock star. The President of the United States. And Mr. Peebles.

Go on. You know you want it. And who am I to stop you?

*End self-pimpery*

The Liar’s Lullaby: a music video

Next week The Liar’s Lullaby will be published in paperback. The novel’s about the death of a singer, in front of 40,000 fans at a stadium concert — a singer who’s the ex-wife of the President of the United States. And the night before she dies, Tasia McFarland writes a song foretelling her death, and warning that if she’s killed, she’ll only be the first.

Here’s the song, and a new music video. Take a look.

And yes, both the song and the video are by the Husband, Paul Shreve.

UPDATE: I’ve got to mention that Goose Creek Music has chosen the song for its “Best of” compilation disk. Yeah, I’m proud of the Husband.

The Liar’s Lullaby: Guardian review

The British paperback edition of The Liar’s Lullaby will be published in a few weeks. Here’s the cool and mysterious new cover. And below that is the cool review from the Guardian.

Joanna Hines writes:

“A fine symmetry bookends The Liar’s Lullaby. In the opening scene, Tasia McFarland, out-of-control, bipolar singer-songwriter and former wife of the US president, makes a dramatic entry on a stage on a zip-line; at the end Jo Beckett, forensic psychiatrist to San Francisco police department, body-rappels from a fifth floor window to escape a couple of crazed assassins. The first high wire act ends in carnage, the final one in rescue. Action scenes like these are full of just the kind of detailed, nail-biting drama that Gardiner does so well… Gardiner is brilliant at making the highly implausible convincing, and switches effortlessly from high tension to tenderness and heartache.”

And yes, that has flat-out made my Saturday morning.

UK! Book! Giveaway! Part II

My upcoming novel, The Nightmare Thief, will be published in Britain on June 9th. To celebrate, my UK publisher is giving away copies of earlier books in the Jo Beckett series. That’s right — giving them away, as in free.

If you are a reader in the UK — meaning, for purposes of this giveaway, you have a UK mailing address — you can win one of these books.

This week, Blue Door is giving away The Liar’s Lullaby.

Once again, it’s first come, first served. The first six people in the UK to comment on this post will get a copy.

That’s all there is to it. Add a comment to this post. Don’t wait. If you want a book, put in your name. At which point your soul will become mine. Mine! Bwahahaha… oh, sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.

Copies are also being given away via Twitter. So you have two chances to win. Good luck!

“The Liar’s Lullaby” soundtrack on iTunes

Three songs from my novel The Liar’s Lullaby are now on iTunes. Check out “The Liar’s Lullaby — a Soundtrack.”

My husband, Paul Shreve, wrote the music and produced the album. He says: “Think of it as a musical companion to Meg’s latest book. It’s cool to be on iTunes but if you want to download for free go to Meg’s web site [meggardiner.com]. Enjoy. Thanks to Patty Reese, Bill Edwards, Definitely Arson – Nate Shreve, Mark Shreve & Chris George. And of course the boys at Goose Creek Music.”

It’s Friday, so I presume you’re ready to play

After yesterday’s culturally elitist post on the Predator opera (“Da choppa is coming but this thing is too fast…” “If it bleeds, we can kill it!”) it’s time for something more down to earth. So, while I imagine how to stage The Liar’s Lullaby as an Aida-style stadium musical (“Look out, the singer has a gun!” “What’s that monkey got in its hand?”), have some fun playing Streetview Zombie Apocalypse.

Note to my mom: I tried it several times, using various Santa Barbara locales — Dos Pueblos High School, the Old Mission… and your address, which was the most deadly. I not only failed to escape, but barely got around the corner from your house before they found me. The zombies killed me in 40 seconds. So keep the car gassed and ready to go, and don’t remove the machete from under the driver’s seat.

Vals Akkoord: The Liar’s Lullaby Dutch edition

So many thanks to Luitingh, my Dutch publisher, for making my day a happy one. They sent me a box of books. Yes, it’s a box full of copies of a book I’ve already read. Many times, actually, since it’s The Liar’s Lullaby, and I wrote it. And they’re all in Dutch, but: books!

For any of you who do read Dutch, Vals Akkoord is Luitingh’s Book of the Month. Which also makes me happy. The shoutline on the cover is “Politiek, paranoia en popmuziek — een dodelijke mix.” I’m guessing you can translate.

Tonight: Tattered Cover Book Store

Tonight I’m speaking at Denver’s wonderful Tattered Cover Book Store. Yes, it’s minus 7 degrees Fahrenheit in Denver. So what? That’s a mere minus 22 Celsius!

Hope to see some of you there. 7:30 p.m. Afterward, the Husband is buying beers. Come on down.

Today: Vroman’s Bookstore

Today I’m speaking at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena. I’ll be talking about The Liar’s Lullaby. And there will be lunch. Yes, lunch. It’s at 1 p.m.

If you’re in the area I’d love to see you.

More about the music from The Liar’s Lullaby

“Bull’s-eye,” the second song from The Liar’s Lullaby, is sung by WAMMIE Artist of the Year Patty Reese. Patty recorded the vocals in Virginia with Goose Creek Music.

But the rest of the music was laid down at Ghost Studios in Ripley, Surrey, by Definitely Arson.

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Definitely Arson is Chris George on organ, Mark Shreve on drums and piano, Paul Shreve on bass, and Nate Shreve on guitar.

Yes, I sent a friend and all the guys in my family into the studio, demanding: Music. Now! Make it good!

I think they did.

The Husband wrote the music to go with the lyrics from the novel. He and my sons brought it to life. And while Ghost Studios didn’t look like much — being in a ramshackle stable in the middle of the countryside — the session provided a few surprises. You’d hope it would, since it’s in Eric Clapton’s hometown. When the recording engineer brought out a microphone for Mark’s drum kit, the mike had a name taped to it. Sting.

It seems the engineer had worked with some good musicians. So it was fairly awesome when the guy asked Mark if he was available for session work. (They’re always looking for drummers around these parts — it’s Spinal Tap country, and they need players who won’t self combust.)

Okay, I’ll stop being a braggy mom now.

No, who am I kidding? Here’s Nate, recording the main riff and the bridge: